Shawn Spencer Saves the World
by PrairieDawn
Summary: Simulated psychic detective Shawn Spencer encounters a fascinating blue box and a most extraordinary murder mystery.
1. Shawn's New Call Box

A note: My usual pattern is to match time periods in stories by the air dates of the shows, but Rose Tyler leaves Doctor Who before the premier of Psych, so I am presuming they are visiting slightly forward of their usual time period, possibly to catch a particular movie.

Thanks to Katididit for fantastic beta reading. You are brilliant.

* * *

Shawn Spencer Saves the World

1981

Shawn was four years old. He sat on the living room floor in in his footie pajamas, surrounded by a tableau of dinosaurs and matchbox cars in the midst of a heated battle. The dinosaurs were winning. Shawn used the muzzle of a Tyrannosaurus rex to flip a red sports car, then settled the beast triumphantly atop it. "Raaaar!"

Henry had an incredibly boring, but important meeting at the statio, and he was, as of right now, running late. He paused in his search of every plausible surface in the room to consider the boy for a moment. "Shawn, I don't suppose you've seen my car keys, have you?" he said, not seriously expecting an answer.

"They're in the bathtub," Shawn replied. "Rar, rar, raar! Hah! I'm going to eat you up, truck!"

"What makes you think they're in the bathtub? Did you take Daddy's keys?" His voice picked up just the slightest edge. If the boy had hidden his keys again, he'd spend the rest of the evening in his bedroom, and no dinosaurs.

Shawn shook his head. "You ran to the potty when you got home. You ran really fast." Several dinosaurs, some of them herbivores, began to feast upon an ambulance.

"So?" Henry prompted.

"You didn't put them down on the way to the potty, but it takes two hands to go potty. You said so."

Henry left the boy to check the bathroom, just in case. He leaned over the tub. There lay the car keys in the tub, right where they would have fallen if he had hastily set them on its edge and they had later fallen in. He smiled. That boy was going to be a detective.

Present Day

Shawn noticed things. He couldn't not notice things. Much as he blamed his father's unconventional parenting methods for that fact, even he had to admit that he came by at least some of his talent honestly. His father's attempt to mold him into the perfect detective had backfired miserably, but not before it had created the brilliant, snarky, unconventional owner of his own simulated psychic detective agency that was Shawn Spencer.

At the moment, Shawn was noticing a big blue box. To be precise, he was noticing himself not noticing a very large blue wooden crate with the words Police Public Call Box lettered in white across its top. It resembled a smallish outdoor storage shed, with translucent windows at eye level all around and a little unlit lantern on top. It sat incongruously on the sidewalk just across the street from his office, studiously ignored by passersby. His own attention kept sliding off of it in a most amusing way.

It was a little like playing with his own blind spot, another activity he had grown expert in during the long and fruitless hours in which the public school system attempted in vain to educate him. The idea of the game was to close one eye, then focus one's gaze such that a classmate's head, or the teacher's, if one were obliging enough to remain still, fell into that region of his visual field that was occluded by his optic nerve. The brain's attempt to compensate for the missing data filled in the blank spot with the background and, voila! One headless classmate. He had been beheading his best friend, Gus, at odd moments for decades now. The blue box gave him much the same entertaining shiver. He didn't want to think about it, and therefore he did want to think about it very much. He leaned back in his chair, put his feet up and looked toward and away from it for several minutes, poking at its strange slipperiness the way one might poke at the hole where a tooth ought to be.

He had just begun to consider whether the box would fit through the door to the Psych agency office when Gus strode in and flipped on the television. "The rent was due yesterday, Shawn. Did you by chance remember to pay it while I was away?"

Shawn spun to face him and grinned. "Have no fear, my assiduous friend, I plan to swing by to drop off the check this afternoon. If I am not distracted by that lovely girl who runs the taco truck betwixt our establishment and the bank."

"Betwixt?"

"Word a day app on my iPhone. Means between." He wasn't sure why there needed to be another word for between, but he liked the feel of it on his tongue.

"I know what it means, Shawn. Should I ask if we have enough funds to cover said rent check?" Gus stood again and began pulling up the couch cushions in what appeared to be an attempt to find the remote.

Shawn sat back down to play with the box across the street. "Gus, come over here a minute."

Gus moved his briefcase full of pharmaceutical swag from the couch to the floor and pulled up the cushion it had rested on. "Have you seen the remote, Shawn?" he asked. "I always leave it on top of the television, but it's not there."

He spun his chair to face Gus. "You only leave it in one place all the time because you do not have the superior powers of observation necessary to simply remember where it fell. Really, though, come over here and look out the window."

Gus strolled over to the window. "What?"

"What do you see?"

Gus shrugged. "Sidewalk. Cars. No clients. What's your point, Shawn?"

Shawn gestured toward the enormous box parked directly across from them, perfectly framed by the storefront window. "There's a giant blue box across the street."

Gus seemed to see it for the first time. "So there is." He looked away. "Do we have any cases lined up for today?"

"Get on the phone and see how fast you can get a forklift out here. I feel like picking up some litter." He tied his shoes, picked up a clipboard and a pen, and sauntered toward the door.

Gus called after him, a genuinely puzzled look on his face. "Shawn, where are you going and why do we need a forklift?"

Shawn smiled. "To move that box over to the office, of course. Unless you think you can do it with a dolly and some elbow grease."

"What box?" Gus said. He turned around and resumed his hunt for the remote. "Unlike you, I have work to do. Let me know if you come up with a case for us."

Shawn shook his head, unsure if Gus was just being his usual philistine self or if his lack of interest was a result of the box's curious spell. "Never mind, I'll do it myself." He backed through the door and headed across the street.

The clipboard was camouflage. Shawn strode confidently across the street and leaned jauntily against the blue box as if he owned it, planning to hold the clipboard in a professional looking manner. He jumped away in surprise as soon as he touched it. He had expected an inert object, but instead the thing hummed faintly, like a refrigerator. He looked quickly around it for extension cords and found nothing, then tested the doors. Locked. That was nothing a crowbar couldn't fix. He took a moment to look up the number, then dialed Dave's Moving and Storage.

"Hello, this is Shawn Spencer, psychic detective. I need a forklift at 411 Fifth Avenue as soon as possible."

The unnaturally chipper voice on the other end of the line replied, "Do you need a forklift operator as well?"

He thought about that for a moment, weighing the entertainment value of driving a forklift with his desire to actually get the box into his office undamaged. "Yes," he said finally, but not without a touch of regret. "And could you expedite, please? Evidence for a case in progress."

"Really?" the voice on the other line bubbled. "Is it a murder case?"

I'm sorry, I can't discuss any details at present," he covered smoothly. "Bill to the Santa Barbara Police Department. Thanks, I'll be waiting." He broke the connection, then reached up to measure the box's height against his. Definitely too tall to get through the door, even if he took that little lantern thing off the top. He spread his arms to measure its breadth, then jogged back across the street to measure his outstretched arms against the door. Some remodeling of the doorway might be necessary, but he was sure he could manage to get the door off without help. And as for getting it back on, he was sure Gus could manage that, maybe with a little help from Dad.

A van pulled up alongside the Psych agency window, "Move it With Dave" painted in large orange letters on its white sides. Shawn shook his hips to an imaginary beat as he danced over to the two large men who had just stepped out of the van. "You like to move it, move it," he crooned, "We like to move it, move it." He jiggled past the two, but stopped in the face of the men's remarkably unamused stares. "Madagascar?" he said. "No?" He stuck out a hand. "Shawn Spencer, psychic detective. I need to move that," he indicated the large blue box across the street, "In here."

"What?" both men said, obviously under the box's don't notice me spell.

Shawn walked them across the street to where the object rested. "This. This box. I want this box moved into my office."

""Won't fit," one of them said, adjusting his "Dave's" cap, also orange, on his head.

The other, presumably the brains of the outfit given the Bob Vila vibe he was giving off, jogged back across the street to study the doorway carefully. "Might be cheaper to bring it in on its side, through the window. We just pop the glass out, turn it, and there you go. We can move it across to your side of the street right now, but it will take a while to find someone to do the glass work."

He left them to their work. As they pulled large yellow straps out of the back of the van and began to measure his new box, he noticed an odd couple walking down the sidewalk with ice cream cones, his yellowish, hers bright pink. She looked college aged, dressed in jeans, a purple crop top, and tennis shoes, a not unusual outfit for the season. He seemed maybe fifteen years older and was dressed in a tailored brown pinstripe suit and a long coat entirely inappropriate for the balmy weather. Incongruously informal red athletic shoes peeked out from the bottoms of his dress pants. As they approached, he could hear them discussing the movie they had just seen. She had a working class British accent, while his was, while British, somehow hard to place, like he was Irish pretending to be British or something. Just not...right. But then, accents weren't his specialty. The man and the girl walked right up to the movers, his big blue box their obvious target. Shawn stepped between them and his prize.

"Oi, that's my police box," the man in the long coat said. "Here, John Smith, public works, you can call me Doctor." He pulled out a wallet with a blank piece of paper in it and waved it at the movers, who immediately backed off.

"Could I see that identification, please?" Shawn said in his best official voice, snatching at the wallet before waiting for a response. He caught hold of it and got the better look he was hoping for. For the first bare instant, the paper seemed to say Doctor John Smith, Santa Barbara Public Works on it, then it went blank. He looked away, and when he looked back at it, the writing seemed to be there again, for just a split second, before vanishing. He grinned. "I think I'll need to keep this, for validation purposes, you understand." He moved to tuck the wallet into his pants pocket, but the other fellow, "John Smith," --was that the best he could come up with?--was quicker. He snatched back the paper and glanced at it.

"Shawn Spencer, Love Machine?" he remarked before tucking it in his coat.

The blonde girl rolled her eyes. Shawn winked at her, but she pointedly turned away.

"Didn't have a lot of time to think of something," Shawn said.

The man who called himself John Smith looked Shawn up and down. "Smart one, aren't you," he said. "Now, if you'll just step out of the way, my companion and I will be heading off."

"What? We haven't even been properly introduced!" Shawn slid his body over so that it completely covered the double doors, hoping to frustrate the man and his...floozy? from entering the box for whatever purpose they might be intending. The box would be just big enough for a little afternoon nookie, he supposed. The prostitute and her John hypothesis sprung to mind and was quickly rejected. His gestures toward her were too protective, and hers had an almost desperate possessiveness, like she had him but wasn't sure she could keep him.

"I'm the Doctor, and this is Rose Tyler," he said, perfunctorily, leaning toward the door in a manner calculated to induce Shawn to move aside.

His cell phone rang. He flipped it open by reflex, leaning back against the closed doors of the blue box. "Shawn Spencer, psychic detective," he said.

"If you're not too busy, Shawn, I've picked up something on the radio," Gus's voice said, "A body's been found under the boardwalk. Sounds like an actor or something. Big rubber monster suit. Shawn, we need a case."

Shawn resisted the urge to break into the old Drifters tune. "Gus, you had me at big rubber monster suit. Send the location to my phone and I'll meet you there. Pay the rent on the way, would you? Better use your account. Thanks!" he finished breezily, and hung up. "Now where were we?" he said to the man and woman who were trying to claim his marvelous box.

"Did I hear something about a murder?" John Smith or whatever his name was, said.

"Did I hear something about a monster?" his girlfriend asked.

Shawn quirked his mouth. "I'm a psychic detective. I help the police out on cases from time to time. You know talking to spirits, doing the whole psychic thing," he tapped his temple.

John Smith gave him a weird look. It was one of those "I can see into your soul" looks that Shawn had never managed to fully perfect, despite hours of practice in front of a mirror. Shawn scrubbed at the back of his neck, uncomfortable in spite of himself. "You're not psychic," Smith concluded.

"The hell I'm not!"

"Right, then how many fingers am I holding up?" The Brit tucked a hand behind his back.

Shawn wished Gus were here to take a peek. He'd have to guess. "Three!"

Smith stared at him again for a long moment. "Lucky guess," he said. "Mind if we tag along? I'd love to see a real police psychic at work." There was a sarcastic note in the man's voice that might mean trouble. On the other hand, trouble was usually fun.

The girl looked up at him. "Don't I get a say?"

Smith grinned. "Rubber monster suit?" was all he had to say.

"That's what you always say, right before the running starts," she said, giving him a little squeeze about the waist that was just slightly more than chummy.

Shawn felt the need to interrupt their cutesy banter before it made him ill. "Thought you were an unbeliever. Unbelievers, they get in the way of the vibe, you know." He added a groovy hand gesture, a sort of hippie wave, for effect.

The Brit smirked at the girl and added, "I didn't say I don't believe in psychic phenomena. I just said you aren't psychic. Let's just say I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt."

Shawn tucked his thumbs into his pockets and took a couple of steps away from the box, half expecting the pair to dart into his place. "Right this way then, Doctor Smith...really, John Smith?"

"Just Doctor. Really."

Right. Never was a man more in need of a nickname. Fortunately Shawn Spencer was the self acknowledged champion of nickname bestowers. He set his mind to work on the task as he led "Doctor" and the girl down the street that led to the stretch of boardwalk where a dead body in a rubber suit could be found.

* * *

I enjoy receiving feedback for my work, and have been known to make changes based on thoughtful criticism. :)


	2. Rubber Monster Suit

Many thanks to Katididit for excellent beta reading.

* * *

It was dead. That was about the only thing that could be stated for certain about the rubbery blue-green creature lying facedown in the sand under the boardwalk. Shawn ducked under the yellow police tape and the edge of the boardwalk to get a better look at it, making a face at the strange, unpleasant odor that did not match what he had come to associate with a dead body.

Head Detective Carlton Lassiter caught his upper arm. "Don't disturb the evidence," he warned with an attempt at menace Shawn found comical. Shawn shook him off and squatted beside the body.

The Brit dropped the remains of his ice cream cone in a trash can and ducked under the police tape. His girlfriend stayed back of the yellow line near Gus, but craned her neck to catch a glimpse of the body. She whispered something to Gus, who was wrinkling his nose uncomfortably. Like Shawn, Smith immediately crouched by the body. It was impossible for either man to stand erect under the low boardwalk.

Shawn took a close look at the rubber suit the victim was wearing. The claws were huge and incredibly realistic, the color of aged ivory, with chips and grooves indicating long wear. The skin of the fingers did not blend into the claws seamlessly, but rolled up around each claw like a cuticle, complete with fraying and slight discolorations consistent with a real body, not a costume. "It's not a suit," he said, quietly.

"Raxacoricofallapatorian, by the look of him," the Brit said. "He'll have a human suit somewhere," he added, then to Lassie, "Mind turning the body over?"

"And who are you?" Lassiter demanded, pulling the Brit to as close to a standing position as the circumstances permitted. There was something odd about how Smith moved, a sort of fluid power and tension, as though he could have easily tossed Lassie several feet, but had chosen to permit him to presume, just this once, upon his person. The Brit favored the detective with a long, dangerous stare--again, Shawn would have to corner the man for a few pointers on how to pull off that look--but didn't pull away.

Shawn decided to intervene before Lassie got himself into more trouble than he had bargained for. "He's with me. Aloysius Chimcheree," he said, by way of introduction. Did the Brit just say something about a human suit?

"I'm the Doctor," the Brit corrected, shaking Lassie's hand and flashing his blank piece of paper at him. "Independent consultant to UNIT, special investigations, alien division. And what you've got there is definitely an alien. Raxacoricofallapatorian, to be exact. The question is, who killed him..."

"Or her," Shawn interrupted.

The Brit glanced back down at the body for a moment. "No, this one's a him. As I was saying, who killed him, and why?"

Lassie sputtered. "There's no such thing as aliens. What I think is that someone used acid to kill our vic, maybe sprayed it on the inside of the costume, and the skin is welded to the interior of the suit. We'll get the body to the morgue, the ME will cut the suit off, and we'll finally be able to get somewhere, Doctor Chimcheree."

"Just Doctor, please," said the Doctor.

"No such thing as aliens?" Gus asked indignantly. "Have you forgotten Henry and Shawn standing on the roof of the movie theater last year? With the bone faced guys on the TV?"

"Mass hysteria caused by an elaborate hoax," Lassie insisted.

"Sycorax," Rose supplied smugly. "Real aliens. We were there," she said to Lassie, deliberately taking Gus's side.

The Doctor stood and walked slowly around the body. "Let's see, he wasn't vinegared...this species has a lethal reaction to acids, explosive, actually, does unmistakeable things to the remains. Really quite disgusting. Not killed by another Raxacoricofallapatorian, that's certain."

Lassie stood beside the police tape, scratching at his temple with one long finger. Shawn felt the tiniest bit sorry for him. He was completely out of his league. On the other hand, so was Shawn. On the other other hand, Shawn was at least prepared to play along until he could fake competence convincingly. He walked over to the Doctor in a half-crouch. "Why not killed by another Raxi...alien?"

"I can't rule out another alien at this point, but another Raxacoricofallapatorian would have eaten the body. Hunter culture." He raised his voice to direct a question to Lassiter. "Can we flip him over?"

"Medical examiner will be here in a moment. She doesn't like having her crime scenes disturbed." Lassie paced the perimeter restlessly, occasionally shaking his head as though he could make the situation stop being strange by force of will.

The Doctor took out a small device, not unlike a penlight, and waved it over the Raxacorico...Raxi, the Raxi's body. What he might have learned from the action, he kept to himself. Shawn was torn between studying the crime scene and studying the strange couple he had invited to said crime scene. He found himself tending to the latter. He stepped back a couple of paces. Gus continued to chat up the blonde girl, with more success than Shawn had been having, it looked like. The look of frank disbelief on his face suggested he was learning all manner of interesting things about her.

The Doctor circled the body again. "Well, where there's one dead alien, there are sure to be more. Aliens, that is, not necessarily dead ones. I don't recommend sitting around waiting for them to turn up, though, not these aliens, especially. How long before the medical examiner arrives?"

"Not long," Lassie said, reflexively glancing up the road to see if the ambulance were already approaching. "What is UNIT, anyway?"

Gus, surprisingly, piped up. "United Intelligence Task Force. They're an international agency devoted to defense against alien invasion. They're not supposed to exist, but they're as bad as the NSA was at keeping their existence a secret."

"Do they have jurisdiction?" Lassie snapped.

"I most definitely do," the Doctor replied, still considering the body on the ground.

Shawn took another step back. There had been three pieces of inexplicable technology associated with this man already, and a familiarity with not only aliens in the abstract, but with this dead alien in particular. His story seemed superficially to hold together, but Shawn found himself wondering if the pair had actually been in Santa Barbara to see a movie at all. While he was thinking, he stepped in something that didn't feel like seaweed. He looked down and found himself standing in a pile of clothing mixed up with something soft and light brown. He picked it up. It was man shaped, but empty, like a wetsuit, and made to look exactly like a human body, right down to the hairs on the backs of the knuckles. It had that same strange odor attached to it as the alien body did, a combination of corroding car battery and halitosis.

"I think I found the human suit," Shawn said, holding it up against his body and waving the arms around. "This is great! It looks just like a real human." It was truly amazing technology, particularly given that the suit looked smaller in several areas than the alien who would have worn it, especially in the head and hands.

The Doctor turned to him. "It's made out of a real human," he said, quietly.

Shawn dropped the human suit and hopped away from it, trying not to step on any of the flopping limbs as it slid to the ground. The corner of a beach towel dangled over the edge of the boardwalk, abandoned by its owner when the area had been cordoned off. He yanked it down and scrubbed invisible contamination off his hands and shirt, then tossed it at Gus to get it away from the crime scene. The towel draped itself over Gus's head. Gus plucked it free with two fingers and flung it into the street.

Lassie ducked his head back under the boardwalk to check out Shawn's discovery. "It looks like we have a second vic," he said. "Cordero, get pictures and mark the area off with tape." He turned his head at the sound of an approaching vehicle. "Looks like the ME is here." He jogged off to speak to her, while the uniformed police officer with the camera ducked under the boardwalk to take some pictures of the human suit.

Lassie returned with the medical examiner, an African American woman of about fifty in jeans, a light cotton blouse, and a straw hat. The two of them ducked under the boardwalk. "Now what's this I hear about an actor in a rubber suit?" the medical examiner said as she bent beside the body, immediately fascinated.

"It's not a suit," Shawn and the Doctor said, in unison.

She waved off their comments while she examined the body herself. "What's that smell?" she said.

"Calcium decay," the Doctor supplied helpfully.

The medical examiner circled the body slowly, making notes in a small notebook all the while. "All right, turn it over," she directed, stepping back while a couple of uniforms flipped the body onto its back. It had an enormous belly and a strangely infantile face, flat with large eyes, no nose to speak of, and a bow shaped mouth. Two clear bullet holes marked the center of the creature's chest, less than a hand span apart. A third ragged hole marred the center of the creature's forehead.

Shawn recognized the pattern immediately and took his cue. He jumped back, grabbed his chest, and moaned loudly, "Querlzug ab ugodoo baff niwongi!" As he had intended, all eyes were now on him, including those of the Doctor and his girlfriend. She looked genuinely surprised, while the Doctor merely looked impatient.

As did Lassie. "Quit fooling around and tell us what you saw, Spencer," he snapped.

"I will translate," he said, primly. "He said he didn't know the guy who killed him. It was a professional hit."

"Thanks, Sherlock, I think we all got that. Pattern of bullet holes. Two taps to the center of mass, followed by one to the head," Lassie said contemptuously.

Shawn took another, closer look at the human suit. He gingerly laid it out face up and flat. The same pattern of holes marked the body, which was dressed in a short sleeved Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts. He checked the feet. The socks were on, but the shoes had fallen off or been removed. Dirt and sand were ground into the heel of one sock, but not into the toe.

He heard the zipping of a body bag behind him. The medical examiner padded up behind him, her footsteps mushy sounding in the sand. She bent to lift the human suit's boneless fingers with a hand covered in a blue glove. "We should be able to get prints off of this." She sat back on her haunches for a moment and wiped her forehead with her sleeve. "I don't like to be pulled away from my garden to a murder scene, but this one takes the cake. Bag these remains too and get them both to the coroner's office for autopsy."

Shawn searched the sand near the human suit for a minute, coming up with one brown loafer. He laid it carefully atop the remains, then ducked back under the tape to where the Doctor was already standing with Gus and the Rose. He was tempted to classify the Doctor and Rose in the same category as Lassie and just go it on his own, but for a secret government official, the Doctor wasn't acting especially officious. He hadn't taken over the investigation, or even properly insulted Lassie, and Shawn had a feeling he would need the strange Brit's esoteric knowledge to solve the case. That settled it. The Doctor could be a part of team Psych, for now.

"What I don't get," he said, once he was close enough to the three others to keep from being overheard, "Is why the killer took the human suit off of the Raxi...whatever after dragging the body here."

"Raxacoricofallapatorian," Gus corrected, flashing Shawn a superior smirk and bumping fists with Rose.

"Why indeed?" The Doctor repeated. "And why move the body to this location? Clearly, he or she wanted it to be found. But what would be the purpose of that? Was he or she trying to send a message to someone?"

Shawn cut in. "ME's leaving with the ambulance. If we want to stay involved with the case, we have to keep close. No one will wait for us. Gus, is your car around?"

Gus nodded. "Over here." He smiled again at Rose. She smiled back, but her eyes were on the Doctor. If she was trying to make him jealous, the Doctor's indulgent smile would suggest that she had not succeeded.

"UNIT, really?" Shawn said. "Or is that as baloney as your name?"

"Well," he said, drawing out the word, "I did work for UNIT some time ago, and I have consulted with them from time to time, but I'm more properly a member of their jurisdiction than a member of the staff."

It took Shawn a moment to parse that, then he asked, "Human suit?"

"Perish the thought!"

"That blue box your spaceship?"

"To the extent that she belongs to anyone. I sometimes wonder if it might be more accurate to say I belong to her. Can't even catch a matinee without landing in the middle of a world shattering crisis. A mind of her own, you see."

They all piled into Gus's pine scented car--organic, real pine distilled from real pine trees as Gus's super smeller couldn't abide the fake chemical stuff--and drove off to the station. Shawn hoped they got there in time to see the look on the Chief's face when she was briefed on their latest case. Actually, he hoped Lassie briefed her, that way, he could give her the accurate, and far more entertaining information himself.

* * *

Thoughtful reviews create better writers.


	3. The Other Vic

Per usual, Doctor Who belongs to the BBC, Psych belongs to USA Network, and I'm not as funny as I think I am. Reviews make us all better writers.

* * *

Shawn led the way into the station. Santa Barbara had been feeling giddy with cash the decade the station and courthouse were built, so little expense had been spared. Warm brick accents contrasted pleasantly with decoratively shaped plaster in wide hallways and generous offices suffused with sunlight from numerous large windows. Chief of Police Karen Vick met him at the door to her office with her arms crossed, looking even more enormous than she had a mere week before. "I heard something about a dead guy in a green alien suit. I guess I shouldn't be surprised you're involved," she said to Shawn as she quickly took in his two unknown companions. "And who have we here?"

Shawn slid quickly into the infinitesimal break before either of the two aliens--he felt justified in thinking of them as aliens regardless of their actual origin, given that Great Britain was not America--and introduced the pair. "This is Doctor Aloysius Chimcheree of the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, show her your ID, Doctor Chimcheree, and his assistant, Lavender Lollipop."

Rose slapped him in the back of the head. "Stop that! Rose Tyler," she corrected, proffering a hand for the Chief to shake.

The Doctor flipped out his paper and shook the Chief's hand in turn. "Pleased to meet Santa Barbara's finest. And it's just the Doctor, really. Now, where have you stashed our alien murder victim?"

"Our alien murder victim?" The Chief shook her head curtly. "We're still checking your credentials." She shouted across the room, "O'Hara, any luck with getting hold of those UNIT people?"

"They want to see Doctor Chimcheree before they confirm he's working for them. I can set up a webcam," Juliet O'Hara offered. She waved cheerily at Shawn, her phone still tucked underneath her chin. A pair of crutches leaned against the wall behind her desk.

"Aw, now that's not strictly necessary, is it?" the Doctor protested, flashing a disarming smile. Unfortunately for him, Shawn's frequent use of the "I'm too cute to refuse" tactic had lent the police chief some immunity.

"I think it is, before you get involved in an official murder investigation," the Chief said, leading the Doctor and Rose over to Juliet's desk and flipping the webcam in their general direction. Shawn stood behind them, first ensuring that each had his and hers bunny ears, moving on to the obligatory man wearing noose pantomime, then finishing up with bracketing the two from behind and making suggestive hand gestures.

Juliet glanced up at the pair, and Shawn behind them. "Yes, that's him. Aloysius Chimcheree. Doctor Chimcheree." She had to pull away from the reciever for a moment to stifle a giggle. She pointedly turned the chair so she no longer had to look at Shawn, then continued her conversation. "Well, I'm glad to hear that. No, I didn't have any plans to vacation somewhere far away from Santa Barbara. Why, are you propositioning me? Oh yes, of course, I'll put him on." She turned back to face the Doctor and handed him the phone.

The Doctor plucked it out of her slim fingers with a slightly flirtatious smile. Shawn suppressed the fleeting urge to smack him and instead listened to his end of the phone conversation. "Ah, yes, hello then, and stop saluting. How's old Lethbridge-Stewart getting on these days? Oh, no, no, nothing I can't handle. Of course I'll call if I need backup, such as it is. Just your basic murder mystery at this point." He paused then, for a little longer, frowning. "What's that? I'm sorry, it would appear this cell phone needs charging, goodbye now." He flipped the phone closed and handed it graciously back to Juliet. "Now, where were we? Coroner's office, yes?"

The Chief stepped in front of Shawn and the Doctor. "Detective O'Hara tells me we are to give you whatever assistance you require," the Chief said, her face creasing with annoyance. "Now, I won't pretend to be happy about you nosing in on my people's investigation, and I expect Detective Lassiter and myself to be kept in the loop." She turned to Shawn. "I do not recall asking for your assistance on this case."

Shawn smirked. "I'm with him." He jerked his chin toward the Doctor, who shrugged noncommittally and started to stroll down the hallway, waving cheerily at the occasional deskbound officer or secretary. When he reached the T-intersection at the end of the hall, he turned the wrong way. Shawn caught his coat sleeve and pointed him in the right direction.

The coroner was waiting in the doorway to one of the larger autopsy rooms with a body on either side of him, looking positively giddy. He counted heads. "I think we'll all fit." He indicated the bluish green creature laid out on a stainless steel table. "Masks and gowns everyone, I'm not taking any chances with this guy." The Doctor entered first, but eschewed the gown and paper mask. "He's really no more dangerous than any other dead body," he said. Shawn followed, taking a cue from the Doctor and leaving off the protective clothing.

Lassiter squeezed in next. He conscientiously donned gown and mask, collected a pair of additional masks and gowns, and handed them pointedly to Shawn and the Doctor. The Doctor tucked his into his coat. Shawn tossed his over his shoulder. Gus caught them awkwardly, opened them, and chivalrously handed them to Rose, who shook her head and passed them back to him. Gus, apparently caught between his instinct to protect himself from alien ickyness and his desire to impress Miss Obviously Taken, put on the gown, but not the mask and succeeded in looking like a hospital patient.

"All here?" the Coroner asked, then continued, "We'll start with this fellow." Shawn leaned in to look. A Y-shaped incision marked the body's chest and abdomen, but the flaps were folded down so that whatever internal organs the creature had were not on display. "It was impossible to identify most of the internal organs. What I think was a heart suffered significant damage from two projectiles," he indicated the two entrance wounds in the chest, "Which would have been fatal even in the absence of the head wound. The anatomy and biochemistry are substantially different from human, or in fact any other animal phylum on Earth. However, given that this is a murder investigation and not a scientific study, I believe I have made some progress." He held out two misshapen pieces of metal in gloved hands, then tucked them carefully into a small baggie.

High heeled shoes clicked toward them from out in the hallway, along with the distinctive metallic click and soft thump of crutches. Shawn raised both hands to bracket his head and intoned, "I sense the approach of two blonde women," a moment before the Chief popped her head into the autopsy room. Juliet arrived a beat later. The six already in the room shuffled around to make space for two--and a half--additional people. Nobody noticed Shawn, who had clearly been upstaged as "weirdest thing in the room" by the body itself.

"I thought it would be wise for me to have a look at our vic." The Chief put on her gown and mask, then turned to Juliet. "Aren't you on the Penzey case?"

"Lunch break," she said, hopping into the doorway to lean precariously against the wall.

The coroner nodded to each woman and continued. "As I was saying, I can conclude that the gunshot wounds to the chest would have been fatal, presuming our vic has physiological requirements even remotely similar to a human's, but because his physiology is so different from anything I've ever seen before, I cannot rule out the possiblity that the wounds occurred postmortem."

The Doctor leaned in. "Could you open the chest cavity? I'd like to get a better look at the damage."

"Certainly, Doctor...?" He peeled open the creature's chest.

"Just Doctor." the doctor plucked a probe off the coroner's instrument table and plucked at some unidentifiable scrambled guts, then pulled out that blue penlight of his and waved it around at the body cavity. "No, looks to me like the bullet wounds are a safe bet for cause of death." He tucked the penlight back into his coat pocket.

Disappointed that he had never quite finished that online course in picking pockets, Shawn checked out the room. Gus stood very still against the back wall, mouth tightly closed, swallowing. Rose tried a couple of jumps, sequestered as she was behind a wall of taller people, then resorted to buffing her nails against her shirt and pretending she wasn't interested. Juliet seemed to be having some difficulty concealing inappropriate glee. The mask she had donned helped, but her eyes twinkled. Lassie stood stock still in front of him, his face the color of wadded toilet paper. "Not a suit," he muttered. He seemed to shake himself out of his trance, then said, "All right, a dead guy's a dead guy. Juliet, take those slugs to ballistics. How about our next vic?"

Juliet tucked the baggie of bullets into a pocket and maneuvered her crutches and booted foot out the door. The coroner moved to the other table and pulled down the sheet. This body looked startlingly normal, compared to the last time Shawn had seen it. The skin had been stuffed with foam rubber to approximate a human form. The dead man was Hispanic, heavyset, and in late middle age, with crow's feet around his eyes and gray roots. His clothes had been removed and tucked into yet another plastic bag, the plaid shorts and pineapple print Hawaiian shirt neatly folded and tagged. "Here are the prints I pulled, for identification purposes." The coroner handed the sheet of prints, also bagged, to Lassiter.

The Chief leaned in to examine the man's face. Her breath huffed out of her abruptly and she drew back, suddenly pale. "Check police personnel records first. I think that's Paul Herrero."

"Chief Herrero from Simi Valley?" Lassiter leaned in to look at the dead man's face. "You could be right. I only met him a couple of times, though." He flipped out his cell phone and punched in a number. "This is Detective Carlton Lassiter, homicide, Santa Barbara police department. Is Chief Herrero in? Oh, he hasn't, has he?" He paused for a moment. "Look, we think we may have found his remains earlier today. We're still waiting on a positive ID from prints, but if you could send someone over...yes." His tone grew hesitant. "I'm sorry. No, I hope it turns out not to be him, but Karen seems pretty sure." He put his hand over the phone. "I think you should handle this, Chief," he said, passing the phone to Vick.

The Chief took it and slid between the two tables until she reached the door, then let herself out. Lassiter turned back to the coroner. "Get these two bodies into separate rooms. No sense getting Simi Valley involved with...that." He gestured toward the dead alien on the table.

Rose squeezed through the space opened by the Chief to join the Doctor. "Slitheen, you think?" she asked him, gesturing toward the alien with her chin.

"Could be," he said. "But the color's odd. Too blue."

"Maybe that's just because he's dead," Rose suggested.

The Doctor appeared to consider her hypothesis, then turned back to the human remains on the other table. "The skin suits hold up for quite some time, once they're processed," he noted. "Your Chief Herrero could have been killed weeks, even months ago."

The coroner nodded. "No signs of decay, and it does appear that the body has been put through some sophisticated chemical treatment I can't begin to guess at. No internal organs or other deep structures remain. The skin, subcutaneous tissue, and in the case of the face and hands, superficial musculature have been preserved and augmented with a flexible polymer layer," He flipped back the forehead to show the grayish, siliconelike backing, glittering with hair thin silver wires.

Shawn turned to the Doctor. "So an alien could have been in charge of the Simi Valley police department for months? What could he have needed them for?" Several ideas came to mind immediately, none of them pleasant.

Lassie held up a hand to create a lull in the conversation. "If he had been replaced weeks ago, wouldn't some member of his staff have noticed a change in his behavior?"

"Yes and no," the Doctor said. "It is possible that other members of the Simi Valley police force have been replaced as well, and that they would then cover for each other. In addition, they are able to assimilate some of their victims' personality traits."

"Psychically, I suppose," Lassiter added sarcastically.

"More or less, though the technique used requires the ingestion of brain tissue." The Doctor was interrupted by a strangled noise emerging from Gus's throat.

Lassiter rolled his eyes, evidently dismayed at the deterioration of basic sanity in the room. "Well, then, maybe Spencer here can use his psychic abilities to identify any aliens that might be lurking in the Simi Valley police department."

The Doctor looked over at Shawn, who was leaning against the wall, propped up by one elbow. Shawn flicked at his temple, then waved jauntily. The Doctor turned back to Lassiter. "If he were actually psychic, that would be a phenomenally bad idea. That would be such a bad idea even I wouldn't try it."

Rose interrupted with a splutter as she apparently choked on a laugh. "Like something being a bad idea ever stopped you."

"Fortunately," the Doctor continued, as though she hadn't spoken, "there are other indicators."

"They fart a lot," Rose clarified.

"Doctor," Lassiter said. "I can't believe I'm actually glad to have some big shot nosing in on my case. First time for everything. Would you go to Simi Valley with the idiot and see what you can find out? Your credentials may prove useful in getting us past some jurisdictional red tape. Juliet?" He looked around. "Good, she's already taken the evidence. And, Miss," he said, referring to Rose. "A good man is lying here, dead. This is not a joke."

"A good man and an evil alien," Shawn reminded the room.

Rose crossed her arms and faced Lassie stubbornly. "They do. Gas exchange with the suit or something."

Shawn took a last look at the alien and the skin of the Simi Valley police chief. There was an oddly geometric, rectangular, in fact, indentation on the neck of the alien. Not knowing yet what it meant, he chose to keep it to himself, in case it turned out to connect to something. He cocked finger and thumb and pointed cheekily at the coroner, winking. The coroner returned the gesture with a discreet double thumbs up and a wicked grin. That man was going to have an entertaining evening with the dead.

The Doctor followed him out the door with Rose leaning into him. "So what's with you and that fellow? Missing Mickey are we?"

"Doctor!" she slapped him on the arm. "Really, he's nowhere near as bad as Mickey. He has a sensitive nose."

"That's a super smeller," Gus corrected from behind them.

A resounding, liquid bellow of a fart echoed from down the hallway. The Doctor quickened his steps in response. Shawn jogged to keep up, Rose and Gus following right behind him.


	4. It Gets Uglier

Thanks again to my lovely beta, katididit, without whom my writing would be less coherent.

* * *

The Doctor walked briskly but quietly down the hall, followed by Shawn, Rose, Gus, and Lassie. Just before they reached the T-intersection that led to the main hall of the Santa Barbara police station, the Doctor held out a restraining arm and turned around, one finger pressed to his lips. "Whoever is out there cannot know that we're on to him. Or her. Raxacoricofallapatorians can smell fear."

"Wait a minute, what makes you think there's another one of those things here?" Lassie demanded. To his credit, he did keep his voice down.

"You didn't hear it break wind just now?" Rose said.

Lassie clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides, but forced a tight smile. "What, are you still making fart jokes? You two are worse than Spencer!"

The Doctor explained smugly, "Calcium decay from the interface with the suit's compression field produces distinctive gassy emissions. And a good thing, too, since it lets us see right through their disguise."

"Not such a great disguise, then, is it?" Shawn remarked.

"Shhh!" Gus said. "I can smell it now. It's that same weird bad breath smell."

"You weren't kidding." Lassie said. He rubbed his forehead as if it pained him. "If there is an alien in a human suit in this police station, we should get him into custody and question him."

"Dude, did you see the claws on that thing?" Shawn reminded the detective.

The Doctor shrugged and grimaced in acknowledgement of Shawn's point. "The Earth has in the past been infiltrated by at least one of their crime families. Whoever is out there should be considered dangerous."

Lassie's hand strayed under his jacket to rest on his gun. "We need to evacuate the station. Get everyone out of harm's way," he insisted, the clear threat giving him a way to fit the fantastic impossibility of the situation into his personal rulebook.

"We can't do that!" The Doctor whispered urgently. "We'll alert the alien, and its behavior might become unpredictable."

"Unpredictable is bad," Rose elaborated briefly.

Shawn jumped in, partly to defend Lassie, who he could not have falling apart just now, and partly because he didn't want Chief Vick, her baby, or Juliet anywhere near those enormous claws. "We just need a pretense and a distraction. Follow my lead."

He pushed past the Doctor and down the hall, where a giant of a woman in an electric blue muumuu was confronting Chief Vick. "I am afraid I must insist on seeing the bodies. Both of them," the woman insisted in a stentorian voice as she waved a badge in Vick's face. She released another gaseous emission, paused, and waved at her own behind in apparent embarrassment.

"I'm sorry, I don't recognize you and I will have to check your credentials before..." the Chief said calmly, crossing her arms and craning her neck to look up at the woman's face.

Shawn's mind presented him with the fleeting, gruesome image of those giant claws slicing down toward the pregnant police chief's body. He threw himself toward them both, pressing both hands to the sides of his head and staggering so that he fell between them. "Oh, God, the pain! We're all going to die!" As he lay on the floor, writhing and stalling, the carbon monoxide monitor plugged into an outlet near the floor caught his eye. Inspired, he curled into a ball and and moved his hands to clutch his throat. Not carbon monoxide, not sexy enough, he needed something more...explosive. "It's gas! I can't breathe and...and...I'm burning!" He raised himself to all fours just long enough to fling himself into Gus's legs. "Gus...help me!" he gasped.

Gus finally took his cue and added, "I think I smell...yes, I smell gas. Don't you smell it?" He turned pointedly to Rose and the Doctor.

Rose nodded, wrinkling her nose. "Oh, yes," she said, elbowing the Doctor hard in the ribcage.

The Doctor shoved the large woman aside. "We need to evacuate the station," he told the chief, loudly. "You first, you're pregnant. Rose, pull the fire alarm, that will get everyone moving." He steered the chief toward the front of the building over her protests.

"I'll call the gas company," Gus offered, flipping out his cell phone. He pointed out the fire alarm to Rose.

Rose pulled the alarm, then walked briskly over to the enormous woman and began to lead her toward the door without the slightest hesitation. "Can't be too careful," she said with a sort of chipper urgency. "The whole place could explode." Gus hauled Shawn to his feet and they joined the exodus.

Once outside, Shawn pulled Gus aside and let the throng pass them. Chief Vick was having a heated argument with the Doctor a few yards away, but he couldn't hear them because of the intervening crowd. The Chief appeared to freeze in mid-word and deflate suddenly, in response to something he said, then turned and walked briskly into the parking lot.

"Find anything out about those two from the girl?" Shawn asked Gus.

Gus shrugged. "She's from London. She talks about aliens as though she knows them personally, but she gets cagey anytime the Doctor comes up in conversation."

Shawn looked from Gus to Rose, who was whispering something in the Doctor's ear and pressing up unnecessarily close to him in order to do so. "She's just using you to make him jealous."

The pretty blonde stood beside the Doctor, searching the area. She caught Gus's eye, smiled, and waved them over. Gus grinned, straightening his collar, his eye on Rose. "Doesn't mean I can't enjoy the attention."

"You think she's sleeping with him?" Shawn made a rude gesture intended to imply that the Doctor might not be quite so human under his suit.

"Shawn!" Gus gave him a shove. "You are disgusting."

Shawn ran a hand through his hair to give it just the right amount of disheveled charm, then sauntered over to where Rose was standing with the Doctor and the flatulent woman-mountain. Gus followed on his right hand, as usual. "What I don't get," Shawn said to Rose without preamble, "is what these two have that I don't?" He indicated Gus and the Doctor.

She smiled broadly, then tapped her tongue against her lips. "Personal hygiene," she said. She laced one arm around the Doctor's and leaned into him.

"Excuse me," said something over six feet and three hundred pounds of peacock blue muumuu clad "woman." "Alanna Barnes, Torchwood." She flashed an ID card at the Doctor, then around at the other three.

"Oh, dear," the Doctor said. "I'm so sorry, Torchwood has no jurisdiction this side of the pond. UNIT territory. I'll have to take this up with my...superiors." It took him a moment to squeeze out the last word. "Would you be so kind as to wait right here while I check you out?"

Ms. Barnes crossed her arms across basketball sized breasts and huffed importantly. The Doctor captured Shawn's arm and walked with him across the parking lot, leaving Gus and Rose to contend with the alien. He flipped out a cell phone and held it to his ear, arranging himself and Shawn so their backs were to Barnes. "We can't leave her to wreak havoc while we investigate. I think we're going to have to take her with us."

"In Gus's car?"

The Doctor glanced up at Gus's admittedly compact vehicle. "Point taken, but I think we'll have to make it work. Irritating as I find those psychic episodes of yours, would you mind staging another one for Ms. Barnes benefit?"

"Aw, you know you love me," Shawn said, slapping the Doctor on the back. He strolled back toward Ms. Barnes, Rose, and Gus. The alien woman held herself with her arms crossed over her chest. At first glance, he thought she looked indignant, but there was something about the tilt of her head, the way she drew her lip between her teeth, the white tips of her fingers where they clutched her huge leather purse--he knew she was a massive green swamp horror on the inside, but the face she was presenting was bereft. It didn't make sense for her to present herself as weak. The signs were too subtle. Shawn hypothesized that the human suit technology must accurately translate the emotions of the wearer. It wasn't like he had anything better to go on.

He kept his hands nonthreateningly in his pockets and put on a kindly smile. Upon reaching her, he reached out as if to take her hand, but paused in mid-gesture. "I'm sorry, I must seem forward, but I'm sensing that you and the murder victim were close. I just wanted to express my condolences."

Gus goggled and opened his mouth, as if to protest. Shawn cut him off with a wave.

"He was my partner. And my brother," Ms. Barnes murmured. "Whoever killed him will suffer for it," she added, her voice hardening.

Shawn nodded sympathetically, then stared off into middle distance for a couple of beats. "I..." he began. "I...oh!" He bent double to clutch his head. "Sorry, signal's coming stronger than usual." He staggered backward into Gus and Rose. "We need...we need a hunter!" Triumphant, he reached forward, grinning, to grasp her shoulders. "Do you hunt? The spirits say that in order to catch a hunter we need a hunter's instincts!"

Ms. Barnes stood up straighter, her ego successfully engaged. "I do enjoy a good hunt," she allowed.

The Doctor strode up to take a place behind Rose. "Absolutely not!" he said. "This is UNIT business. I won't have Torchwood getting its overconfident mitts in."

Shawn schooled his face to an appearance of sternness. "Doctor, Ms. Barnes needs to be with us. The spirits insist upon it."

"Doctor?" Ms. Barnes said, giving the word a peculiar inflection that made it both a title and a name. She looked sharply at the wiry man in the trenchcoat. "Are you now?"

He returned her sharp gaze. "And what of it?"

She drew herself up to her full height. "Know this, Doctor. Much rides upon a satisfactory conclusion to this investigation. I will see justice done." Her gaze took in the police station, then scanned the horizon and came to rest pointedly on Shawn and the Doctor. "Nice town."

"Justice, eh?" the Doctor said. He bit off two more words. "Nice outfit."

Shawn stepped between the two of them, stretching his arms first around the Doctor's shoulders, then, after a brief shuddering hesitation, around the other alien's. "Now, now, we're all on the same side, here. Let's go catch ourselves a murderer."

He strolled between the two of them for a few paces before both shrugged him off, but by then the moment of tension had passed. He jogged to catch up with Gus and Rose, but they still managed to commandeer the two front seats of Gus's car, leaving Shawn to squeeze into the middle seat between the two aliens. Ms. Barnes farted explosively just before entering the vehicle. "Pardon me," she said.

Gus reached for the can of air freshener he kept under the driver's seat and rested it between his legs for easy access during the rest of the trip. Shawn scrunched his shoulders up and tried to think small.

Simi Valley was not really as far from Santa Barbara as the amount of time they spent in the car would suggest. Shawn wasn't sure what was worst, the sudden snarls of traffic, the massive alien on the left's unstoppable flood of flatulence, or the one on his right's unstoppable flood of chatter. He suspected he would have found some of whatever the Doctor was talking about fascinating if he'd had any context. Unfortunately, most of it sailed right over his head. He considered feigning another psychic episode on the off chance that it would shut the Doctor up, but he suspected he would merely be treated to a lecture on psychic phenomena on other planets he wasn't familiar with and about which he cared very little.

Finally, mercifully, the car pulled up to the Simi Valley police station. The five of them piled out of the car. Rose took Gus's arm and said, "I need to go pick up some girl stuff across the street." She gestured with her chin toward the drugstore. Gus allowed her to drag him away, while Shawn, Ms. Barnes, and the Doctor flashed identification of varying levels of authenticity at the uniformed officer guarding the door and gathered at the reception desk.

Officers and other staff clustered in groups of two or three, speaking in low voices. The officer manning the desk's eyes were red and puffy, but her voice was steady as she addressed them. "Is this an urgent matter?"

The Doctor leaned onto the counter and flashed his paper at her. "I'm the Doctor, with UNIT. We're investigating the circumstances surrounding the Chief's death. Could we speak with Chief Herrero's lead detective? In the Chief's office, if you don't mind."

"Detective Adeola is out on a case, but I will let you know when he arrives." She pointed to an office across the hallway and handed the Doctor a key.

"Thank you, Officer Clark," he said, then opened the office door and let them all in.

"First things first," Shawn said, once they were inside the office. "Ms. Barnes, you said the...ah...person impersonating the Chief was your partner. Partner in what?" While he waited for her answer, he glanced at a picture on top of the filing cabinet. Herrero stood in fishing gear next to an equally amply endowed wife, who was holding a shotgun in one hand and a dead rabbit in the other.

Ms. Barnes shrugged. "We were conducting an investigation into some fugitives reported to have taken refuge on this planet." She flicked a glance at the Doctor. "What, you'd rather we have called in the Judoon?"

"Are they Slitheen?" The Doctor asked.

"Yes, Slitheen." Ms. Barnes made the word into a curse. "Rounding up that particular crime family has consumed a significant portion of Fremlin family resources for years. We tracked a whole nest of them here."

"We've met the Slitheen," the Doctor said. "But how many of them are there?"

"Here? I don't know. There are still quite a few at large in this part of the galaxy."

"How many is quite a few?" the Doctor pressed.

"Fewer than ten thousand," Ms. Barnes said dismissively. "We've managed to carry out sentence on most of them."

The Doctor turned to her, his face suddenly stony. "And how many were in the family Slitheen when sentence was passed?"

"Three million." She strode around the desk to make herself home in Chief Herrero's chair. "Our family is charged with maintaining order in the Raxas Confederacy. It is a thankless job at times, but we do it with pride and efficiency." She rifled through the papers on the desk. "It would appear my partner had tracked a nest of Slitheen to the Santa Barbara area, where they were involved in some sort of real estate investment scheme." She gathered up the pages and handed them to the Doctor. "Do these make any sense to you?"

The Doctor flipped through the top two or three pages, shrugged, and said, "Early twenty-first century Earth finance is ridiculously complicated." He handed the pages off to Shawn, who glanced at the names and addresses just long enough to memorize them, then set them back down. He would get Gus to look at the numbers later.

He wandered casually around the room. There was a faint, feminine scent of perfume, something sweet and girlish, with vanilla notes. He pulled open file doors, one by one. Files, files, more files, small sweater from a twinset...interesting. He thought back to his memory of the people in the police station when they arrived. There had been a dozen people in the room, nine who could be identified as police by uniforms or sidearms, two people sitting, bewildered, on chairs by the door, and one young woman in a sundress. A uniformed woman had brought her a cup of coffee, which she had held close to her body, but had not sipped.

He peered through the picture window. She was still there, with the uniformed woman. They were standing next to each other awkwardly, as though each felt obligated to comfort the other, but didn't know the other well enough to say anything helpful. Gus and Rose had returned from their errand, but appeared to have been waylaid at the reception desk. "Ms. Barnes," he said without turning around, "How long were you and your partner using your, ah, current identities?"

"Eleven of your days," Ms. Barnes said. "Why?"

"It might matter. I feel...I feel that the chain of events that led to your partner's death may have begun before your arrival. If you'll excuse me," he said, opening the door. "I feel the need to commune with the bereaved."


End file.
